Boxee Says Customers Will Experience 'Minimal Changes'

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After 6 years, Internet streaming service and set-top box company
Boxee will be closing up shop as a result of its purchase by
Samsung, announced on July 3. The Korean tech giant essentially
bought Boxee's talent and ideas to help improve its smart TVs and
will not keep the company itself in business.

On July 4, Boxee announced that it will close down its cloud DVR
service, which allowed people to record TV programs online,
giving them less than a week to binge-watch whatever they had
saved.

But customers won't be left out in the cold, company spokesperson
Andrew Kippen told us in an email. While the Boxee Cloud DVR
set-top box and the older Boxee Box device will no longer connect
to a Boxee service, it seems that the company will make sure it
has access to other online video and music services that were
included, such as Pandora, MLB.TV, and the obligatory Netflix.
[See also:
5 Steps to Cut Cable and Enjoy TV for Half the Price ]

"We're working behind the scenes to ensure there's minimal impact
to people's devices. Apart from the Cloud DVR shutting down, we
expect minimal changes," Kippen wrote to us.

Boxee planned to offer both a free and paid DVR service (for $10
per month). Both were to have unlimited recording, but the free
service had restrictions on how long recordings would be
available and how many hours people could watch per month. But
the program was still in beta and had so far been offered for
free, so no one lost any money on subscription services. "We've
never charged for Cloud DVR," said Kippen. (TV-over-the-Internet
service Aereo,
in comparison, charges customers $8 per month to record 20 hours
online and $12 for 60 hours.)

But with Boxee's $99 set-top box so integrated with a now-defunct
online service, customers aren't exactly getting what they paid
for. " We will honor our 90 day return policy for people who
bought off our website," said Kippen. The devices were also sold
in retail and would presumably be subject to those stores' return
policies.